SBS Dateline headed for 'the axe' comments open up huge rift

The supervising producer of SBS's flagship international current affairs program, Dateline, has launched an extraordinary attack on the networks director of news and current affairs, Jim Carroll.

"While the pundits debate how much will be cut from the budgets of the public broadcasters by the government's Expenditure Review Committee, one decision is certain: the SBS program Dateline in its present form is for the axe," Dateline's supervising producer Alan Hogan wrote in an opinion piece published by Crikey.

The networks will share up to $300 million in budget cuts over the next five years. But an SBS spokeswoman said that the cuts to Dateline where unrelated to the review.

"Any changes to Dateline that we make would be completely unrelated to any outcomes of the government funding review process," she said.

At a recent staff meeting Carroll wielded the axe through Dateline's finances for the year ahead, according to Hogan. Carroll said that there was only enough funding to cover 10 stories over the next six months. The rest would have to be filled by repeats and foreign "buy-ins".

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At SBS's 2015 program launch on Friday, managing director Michael Ebeid said he was confident that any further cuts would not compromise the broadcaster's content.

"A big focus for the SBS team and I over the past six to 12 months has been to talk to the government and talk to them about how we do business and the fact that we have very efficient work practices in our organisation and probably the most efficient in the Australian media landscape.

"I'm absolutely confident that we as an organisation have the ability to absorb further cuts ... without compromising on our content."

The program has won 18 Walkley awards for journalism over the course of its 30 years on SBS.

The budget cuts have highlighted tension within the newsroom, with Hogan publicly attacking Carroll for his news sense, rash employment decisions and inability to communicate with staff.

Carroll was formerly the news director of the Ten network, and held several senior positions at Seven and Nine before then.

"The way [Carroll] sees it, [Dateline's stories] too often seem to be about starving or oppressed people, or people doing terrible things to the environment, or political developments in countries we don't care about," Hogan said.

"Carroll thinks the program needs to lighten up, more stories about pop culture, for example, positive entertaining stories that make for happy viewing.

"That would be absolutely fine if Dateline needed to chase ratings and SBS were a commercial broadcaster, but it isn't. It's a public broadcaster with different responsibilities."

The comments signal a rift in the SBS news division, with Hogan singling out the prime-time news bulletin for underperforming while Dateline maintained consistent audience figures of 250,000 people.

"If SBS has a ratings problem, it's not Dateline," said Hogan. "Dateline is broadcast at the particularly difficult timeslot of 9.30 on Tuesdays, while the news sits in early prime-time" .

Hogan said that Dateline staff had been left in a state of limbo with the last program due to go to air next week.

"What will happen to staff at the well-regarded program, [is] far from clear."

Twitter users were quick to defend the program, with journalists from rival networks and publications describing it as a "tragedy".